ADDRESS 
BY 
Proressor WILLIAM BATESON, M.A., F.RB.S., 
PRESIDENT. 
Part I—MELBOURNE:! 
Tue outstanding feature of this Meeting must be the fact that we are 
here—in Australia. It is the function of a President to tell the 
Association of advances in science, to speak of the universal rather than 
of the particular or the temporary. There will be other opportunities 
of expressing the thoughts which this event must excite in the dullest 
heart, but it is right that my first words should take account of those 
achievements of organisation and those acts of national generosity by 
which it has come to pass that we are assembled in this country. Let 
us, too, on this occasion, remember that all the effort, and all the 
- goodwill, that binds Australia to Britain would have been powerless to 
bring about such a result had it not been for those advances in science 
which have given man a control of the forces of Nature. For we are 
here by virtue of the feats of genius of individual men of science, 
giant-variations from the common level of our species; and since I am 
going soon to speak of the significance of individual variation, I cannot 
introduce that subject better than by calling to remembrance the line 
of pioneers in chemistry, in physics, and in engineering, by the work- 
ing of whose rare—or, if you will, abnormal—intellects a meeting of 
the British Association on this side of the globe has been made physically 
possible. 
I have next to refer to the loss within the year of Sir David Gill, 
a former President of this Association, himself one of the outstanding 
great. His greatness lay in the power of making big foundations. Ha 
built up the Cape Observatory; he organised international geodesy ; he 
conceived and carried through the plans for the photography of the 
whole sky, a work in which Australia is bearing a conspicuous part. 
> Delivered in Melbourne on Friday, August 14, 1914. 
B2 
